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JeffPT - excellent post, as usual. I really thought we might have a theist in whatchamean that could discuss these topics without all of the ignorance and straw man fallacies, as well as bringing a superior knowledge of scripture to the table. But alas, I was wrong.

I'm afraid that your post will go completely ignored, because it simply does not fit the worldview of all things God.

First off, evolution doesn't have anything to do with abiogenesis.Evolution is concerned with what happened after life got started on Earth, not how it got started.

Your theory that God doesn't exist has everything to do with abiogenesis. Animation from inanimate matter is your faith. Don't be a coward simply because you have no scientific answer for living things.

The default way humans learn is to slavishly copy the actions and attitudes of the ones teaching them, even when it doesn't make logical sense. So of course if someone studying the Bible has a teacher who honestly believes that it is a series of factual historical documents, they will pick up that attitude; it has nothing to do with careful study and everything to do with the way the teacher acts.

And you are simply wrong that atheists such as curiousgirl have not considered the possibility of the Bible being true. They have; that is largely why they are atheists, because they considered the possibilities, investigated the claims and evidence, and concluded that there really wasn't much of a basis for concluding that the Bible is a particularly valid historical document.

My point wasn't so much that atheists haven't considered, but how they considered.

The fact that it includes some historical stuff doesn't make it a valid historical document anymore than a book about a secret 9/11 government conspiracy includes people, places, and things that actually exist makes it truthful about all the claims it makes.

That's true, but we won't dismiss those facts just because a book makes claims that we might not understand right away.

As for "questioning the existence of someone who is no longer among us", what exactly is this supposed to mean? I don't doubt that there were generations upon generations of people who have no historical records to back up their existence, but there is a difference between saying, "people in general lived even though we don't have specific records about them" and saying "this specific person did these specific things even though we have no records except for a religious holy book to verify it".

Actually, there are 66 books and/or letters written over roughly 1600 years compiled into one book called the Bible and most of them tell us things about the Messiah. How many books are there which contain info about people before they were born?

"And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people. To him shall the Gentiles seek and his rest shall be glorious." Isa.11:10

There are many prophecies of how non Jewish people from every nation on earth will come to worship the God of those backwoods people who lived in an insignificant country the size of Maine. Pretty impressive, but the point is....there is no other book on earth which matches this kind of stuff.

And please stop with the nonsense about "transitional fossils". Seriously, just stop. I already explained to you in that other topic you started that there are no such things as transitional species. Because there are no transitional species, there can be no such things as transitional fossils. If you want to say there are, you have to show that my statement is invalid, and you have not done so.

You don't have to convince me that there are no such things as transitional species. There's not even evidence to prove there ever were.

People pray to God because they feel helpless about things, that those things are beyond their power or control. So of course, if something happens that is beneficial afterward, they assume that some higher power intervened on their behalf.

It isn't a matter of thinking that God should have helped someone who prayed, it's a matter that it was nothing more than chance - and not a very good one - of something beneficial happening. Rather than relying on a poor chance of a good outcome happening while doing nothing, it is better to try to make that good outcome happen.

I'm not opposed to working toward good outcomes, but I'm also not opposed to the idea that if I live a sinful life I should expect nothing from God through prayer. I'm also not opposed to the idea that what I think is good might not be.

Yes. Millers amino acid experiment....which proves that without the assistance of external intelligence, amino acids wouldn't exist. I won't even discourage you with the probability that amino acids (much less proteins) formed without intelligence.

So science does support that amino acids came into existence without the help of God. Unless you can show me an experiment that proves that men are from dust and women are from ribs. Doubt that will happen, though.

Science already knows that people are made from what is in the ground. If science could show that Adam wasn't chemically composed of the "dust" of the earth, then the Bible would be disproved.

I’m not sure what planet you are living on in that head of yours, but I have just shown you evidence. God did not make man in his own image. Go read the article I provided. The lineages of humans and chimps diverged so that we could become homo sapiens and they could be homo troglodytes. If you kick and scream from this point on, I will have to attribute it to willful ignorance.

Willful ignorance is in knowing the ovewwhelming evidence that chimps and humans are so closely related genetically, that science has found it impossible to crossbreed them. It is you who are willfully ignorant.

So where are the fossils proving that Noah’s Flood happened, which I discussed in my last post? There should have been evidence of a mass extinction around the purported time of that event if it really happened. There is fossil evidence for evolution, which is obviously better than no fossil evidence for creationism.

There is no evidence of evolution in the fossil record. Many of the fossils we have are evidence of the biblical flood.

The oldest reptiles having mammal-like features, the synapsids, occur in rocks of Pennsylvanian age formed about 305 mya. However, the first mammals do not appear in the fossil record until Late Triassic time, about 210 mya. Hopson (1994) noted, "Of all the great transitions between major structural grades within vertebrates, the transition from basal amniotes [egg-laying tetrapods except amphibians] to basal mammals is represented by the most complete and continuous fossil record.... Structural evolution of particular functional systems has been well investigated, notably the feeding mechanism... and middle ear, and these studies have demonstrated the gradual nature of these major adaptive modifications."

Do you know that different rock layers contain fossils that aren't supposed to be there? Do you know how rock layers are dated? Do you know what you'd do if I saw a flood coming?

Strawman. The whole point of the schoolteacher story is to illustrate that whether you pray or not does not matter. Shit is going to happen whether or not you pray, because prayer does not seem to work. As far as the SPAG, I explained that it is a Christian thing, so I’m not sure why you keep attributing it to me, because I don’t even think there is a God, let alone believe he would think like me.

Call it a strawman all you want. You've chosen to read the Bible with your own view of what God should do.

An apology has nothing to do with the discussion. I am talking about the possibility that IF God exists, he supposedly created me and therefore put the desire for truth in my heart. So why do Christians and the Bible tend to get things so wrong when it comes to truth?

BTW, those last few sentences reeked of something you have been spoonfed by your church, with a little tiny hint of Pascal's Wager thrown in. Except the irony is that you are right that we are "alone," but in the sense that God is merely a projection of ourselves.

It still amazes me that you can always tell when someone hasn't approached God with an open heart. It's incredible how God did this.

Bravo! In some ways I admire your artistry, watchamean. However, I'd like some clarification

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I won't even discourage you with the probability that amino acids (much less proteins) formed without intelligence.

Whilst I will concede that amino acids are improbable constructs, and that if I assume that there is only one way to construct life in this particular universe, via amino acids (which is not totally certain), then how do I honestly ascertain probability, given that the universe appears to be infinite in extent? To indulge you, do I assume that the universe is 26 billion light years across, and therefore of finite size? Or, do I grant that your infinite God may have created an infinite-sized universe for his splendor? If the universe is infinite in extent, then how do I judge "probability"; since any small probability multiplied by infinity gives at least 16.

Or, do you not agree that the universe is even 27billion light years across, because this is not consistent with the story of Noah?

In your assessment of the size of the universe, how do you interpret QM, which gives us an appearance of a universe which has not decided on any certain verdict, and could well be infinitely variable. To me, there seems to be enough power in the universe itself to create amino acids. It seems to me that creationists must underestimate the creation of God, to prove to themselves that God must meddle inside it. This is a circular problem. How do you know that God did not create the universe in a way that was designed to explore all forms of life; all variants of life constructs (inc. via amino acids), using its apparent infinite extent, and apparent acausal variability?

When you consider the photons from the Andromeda galaxy 2million light years away, do you invoke novel cosmological theories to explain the time involved; I mean axiomatically, photons must be up to something, if Noah was 6000 years ago.

Since you are so sure of everything, I and many physicists would like to know the following(1) how big is the universe(2) QM implies a multiverse; is that true or not?(3) can you explain the mathematics of how the Andromeda galaxy appears to be 2 million light years away?(4) do you think future physics and cosmology will explain things which you are trying to use as proof of God?

These things all need answering.

Also, your statement of chimp breeding was not clear.

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When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be bleedn obvious.

Your theory that God doesn't exist has everything to do with abiogenesis. Animation from inanimate matter is your faith. Don't be a coward simply because you have no scientific answer for living things.

bold mine.

First, everyone who is a normal, healthy person connected to other people and society has some kind of faith. But let's understand that when we talk about "faith", they are not all the same thing. In the quote above, you are using it interchangeably with the word "religion", but implying it means "trust", which would be incorrect. It is a dishonest way to argue.

Second, calling someone a coward - particularly when courage has nothing to do with it - is also a pretty dishonest way to try to win an argument. It is an emotional appeal, and a poor one at that.

I also find it to be sad that you think it is a weakness or a fault that we have not found all the answers in the universe after less than 200 years with the scientific method. We also have no "scientific answer" for cancer, or black holes, or why people vote republican, or glory holes, or traffic, or a trillion other questions. That does not mean god is the answer to any of it.

That seems disrespectful and short sighted to me. You[1] have made the identity god = ignorance. By saying "you don't know, so it must be god" you have made the case that where we are ignorant, there answer is (has to be, I tell you!) god. You have made a graven image of you ignorance, and you bow down to it. In old testament times, yhwh might have killed you himself or he might have had a prophet command your tribe to do it for him.

By perpetuating a god of the gaps you are setting your descendants up to worship a very small and ever shrinking god. While you think that may work for you now, as the human animal figures out the universe more and more, your god will have less and less responsibility, less and less power. And eventually, your god will have dominion over but one thing - your mind.

No more or less unreasonable than understanding that you yourself were once an egg and a sperm. And that egg and sperm, before they became you, were just lifeless strains of protein that formed a certain way.And that is how evolution works too.

No they weren't Jeff. The egg and sperm are made of living cells each containing 23 chromosomes which then unite to form a new living cell which has all 46. Evolution isn't even in the same ballpark as creation. Life only comes from other living things Jeff. Your theory is dead from the start.

Any species will be just like the species it came from, but will also be like the species it gave off. But over a really REALLY long period of time, with small changes (just like how you've changed throughout your life) you will see enough changes to consider it a different species.

You consider it a different species, but science does not. Science actually proves evolution is impossible because we know genetic boundries from one life form to another cannot be crossed. Your theory is dead even after throwing in life free of charge. Jeff, look at what you're theory teaches and then look at the evidence. You're being lied to.

In terms of these pictures... a good analogy for what you are doing here would be asking for the specific day, hour, minute and second you went from being a young adult to an adult. Can you do that? The same goes for evolution.

Your good anaology is that evolution is just like me becoming older. You are so warped it's almost beyond belief.

You consider it a different species, but science does not. Science actually proves evolution is impossible because we know genetic boundries from one life form to another cannot be crossed. Your theory is dead even after throwing in life free of charge. Jeff, look at what you're theory teaches and then look at the evidence. You're being lied to.

Yes, and it seems to be by *you*. It's always sad that Christians think that they can lie for their religion and that no one actually knows the science that they lie so pathetically about. I'd suggest you look at Romans 3 where Paul says that God gets mighty miffed if you think you can lie "for" him.

Along with what Emergence as asked, I'll ask you to show where "science" has "proven" evolution is impossible. And you can use big words. I am quite up to date on biology so you won't have to "talk down" to me with your vast knowledge on how evolutionary theory is so "wrong". Now, I'm expecting that you'll either refuse outright or simply ignore my request. And that, dear Whatcha, will demonstrate you for the willfully ignorant liar you are.

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"There is no use in arguing with a man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus 1" - Pirates of Venus, ERB

Whatchamean, your last post to me was basically this (not necessarily in this order):

1. You ignored the evidence I presented for no good reason.

2. You lied that there was no evidence, when I had already presented some.

3. You used the No True Scotsman fallacy.

4. You implied that science is based on faith, when it is actually based on careful observation and conducting experiments to test hypotheses.

5. You said there was fossil evidence for the Biblical flood, but did not provide any for us.

6. You asked questions instead of answering them.

7. You were totally dismissive and condescending because I have challenged your precious little ticket to immortality.

Nice job. You are making yourself look ridiculous. You obviously don't care about evidence because you are so comfortable in your beliefs that you will use all of the shabby, pathetic little arguments that almost all the other desperate theists on here use every single day. In short, you are a dime a dozen.

There is no evidence of evolution in the fossil record. Many of the fossils we have are evidence of the biblical flood.

wow, how could I have missed this little gem. No, whatcha, this is a lie and its sad that you think to spread it. We have no evidence of your bible flood. You see, I'm a geologist, and geologists know what floods do and what to look for when looking for evidence that they occured. We see none of the telltale signs of a global flood anywhere. Not one single shred of evidence.

We see no large uniform layer, graded coarse at the bottom and fine at the top, in the time periods Christians claim as the time of the flood(you guys can't even agree on *that* little detail). We see no mixed fossil beds containing similar shaped and similary heavy organisms. No velociraptors and humans, for instance. We see no massive rafts of vegetation. We see no mixing of salt and freshwater organisms and sediment chemistry. In short, we see NO evidence of the myth you present as supposed fact.

What we do see is the evidence of the slow regular deposition of marine invertebrates in the layers that now make the top of mountains, which fulfill the predictions of the theory of plate tectonics very nicely. We see fossils increase steadily in complexity from older to newer layers. We see newer layers consisting of the remains of older layers, in conglomerates. We see folded rock here in the Applachians that demosntrate that only already formed rocks can be folded, wet ones squish too much.

Watch this video:
It does a great job showing how reality simply doesn't support your myth as true. However, I suspect that, like many Christians, you are too afraid to have your claims shown to be wrong and will not watch. I suspect you will cling to your willful ignorance because you have too much of your self-worth wrapped up in such nonsense like the bible. That's sad, but you have at least served as an example of how some Christians really are, unconcerned with facts but only with spreading nonsense to keep up their religion.

I find myself wondering when you are ever going to show any evidence for anything you are asserting, and everything you are attempting to refute with regards to science? What is the problem with showing us the evidence that evolution is somehow wrong, and that we are being lied to?

Please, be specific, because we thrive on facts and evidence to test our assumptions.

You consider it a different species, but science does not. Science actually proves evolution is impossible because we know genetic boundries from one life form to another cannot be crossed. Your theory is dead even after throwing in life free of charge. Jeff, look at what you're theory teaches and then look at the evidence. You're being lied to.

The evidence supports the theory. I don't know where you're coming from here, but the fossil records show the progression of multiple different lineages. The way you're trying to debunk evolution makes me wonder if you only know the word through Pokemon or something similar since you talk about "genetic boundaries" being crossed like you think one species jumps to another. That... isn't what either the theory says nor what the evidence shows. It's less that they are switching species, and more that species are slowly changing until the point where they no longer look at all similar to their great-great-great-greatx1000 grandparents and we rename them accordingly since they've become noticably distinct.

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"You play make-believe every day of your life, and yet you have no concept of 'imagination'."I do not have "faith" in science. I have expectations of science. "Faith" in something is an unfounded assertion, whereas reasonable expectations require a precedent.

Three cycles of greater length than the varve cycle are suggested by fairly regular recurrent variations in the thickness of the varves and in the thickness and character of certain beds and by the fairly regular spacing of certain salt-mold layers. The first of these cycles averaged a little less than 12 years in length and appears to correspond to the cycle of sunspot numbers. The second cycle had an average length of about 21,600 years and suggests the average period of about 21,000 years which is the resultant of the cyclic changes of eccentricity of the earth's orbit and the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. The third cycle, which was about 50 years long, agrees with no well-established rhythm.

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Rhythmites deposited in a lake near Interlaken in Switzerland are thin couplets, each consisting of a light-colored layer rich in calcium carbonate and a dark layer rich in organic matter. Proof that these rhythmites are annual and are therefore varves is established on organic evidence. The sediment contains pollen grains, whose number per unit volume of sediment varies cyclically, being greatest in the upper parts of the dark layers. The pollen grains of various genera are stratified systematically according to the season of blooming. Finally, diatoms are twice as abundant in the light-colored layers as in the dark. From this evidence it is concluded that the light layers represent summer seasons and the dark ones fall, winter, and spring. Counts of the layers indicate a record extending back to 9,500 yr B.P. ["years before present"].

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When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be bleedn obvious.

How many negative Darwins do I have to get before I get a set of steak knives?

Checked ur back?

Priceless! and good job posting the bit about the varves. Excellent evidence and always cool to get geologial terms spread far and wide.

whatcha, you seem to be doing just like I predicted, ignoring anything that shows your myths to be the nonsense they are. You also avoid actually addressing anyone's request for evidence supporting your claims. So much for a Christian trying to spread the "good news". All you've done so far is demonstrate how empty your religion and your claims are.

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"There is no use in arguing with a man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus 1" - Pirates of Venus, ERB

(Please notice how after having a brain fart, your hero simply ignores the qestion and restates his unfounded belief.)

Might help if you actually linked the video... and... uh... I'm assuming you copy/pasted some of those lines: The word is "speechless". I'm assuming. Because, after all, I can't view the video without links - so maybe he is being speeless.

Also, the use of the word "Hero". Although I cannot speak for Emergence (or anyone else), I can say not every atheist looks up to him. He does not represent all of Biology, nor is he considered super-human. Assuming you aren't subverting a stupid statement from the person talking to Dawkins, a hicup or two does not a lie make. In fact, that's a bit of a non sequitur. If you want to show them as lying, you will have to actually dig up the subversion that you think most of the world's biologists are partaking in (because after all, it isn't just Dawkins). Or can we assume that your habit of ignoring posts means that you are lying to us?

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"You play make-believe every day of your life, and yet you have no concept of 'imagination'."I do not have "faith" in science. I have expectations of science. "Faith" in something is an unfounded assertion, whereas reasonable expectations require a precedent.